Ki Tisa - Ex. 30:11-34:35

In Exodus 32:10, God tells Moses to leave Him alone so that He can wipe out the entire Israelite nation and give all the inheritance to Moses. Yahweh had had enough of the sin and complaining so His apparent plan was to make a new nation out of Moses. Who wouldn't take that deal? But Moses jumped in and gives God multiple reasons why He shouldn't annihilate everyone and God apparently changes His mind. Is it possible to change the mind of the Creator? Does God need anger management classes? What's really going on here?

We come across many important items in this week's Torah portion as we continue through the book of Exodus. In this article, I'm going to focus on one strange instruction that's sandwiched in between all of the actual items of the tabernacle. As the text goes into the details of the altar of incense, the brazen laver (which was actually copper), the holy oil, the incense, etc...it takes time out to talk about how to take a census. My spirit started jumping immediately when I read it and I knew there was something there, but I didn't know exactly what the Spirit wanted to show me. It just seemed out of place as it was not a constructible item of the tabernacle, a piece of clothing or anything of the like. It's the law of taking a census of the children of Israel. So I began to pray and meditate and dig right there. And it didn't take long for my spiritual shovel to hit gold. There was a reason, after all, why the Creator gave this instruction right in the middle of the details about the items of the tabernacle. Here's why: